Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney will deliver a much-anticipated speech on religious faith at the George H. W. Bush library on Thursday, CBS News has confirmed. Romney's Mormon faith has been an underlying theme of his presidential candidacy but, until today, it has been an area he and his campaign have shied away from addressing directly.

"This speech is an opportunity for Governor Romney to share his views on religious liberty, the grand tradition religious tolerance has played in the progress of our nation and how the governor's own faith would inform his Presidency if he were elected," said Romney spokesman Kevin Madden in a statement released Sunday evening.

On Monday, Romney said he decided to give the speech because the subject is of interest in early voting Iowa, according to the Associated Press.

"I can tell you I'm not going to be talking so much about my faith as I am talking about the religious heritage of our country and the role in which it played in the founding of the nation and the role which I think religion should generally play today in our society," Romney said in an interview with WBZ-AM.

He added: "I will also talk about how my own values and my own faith will inform my thinking if I were lucky enough to become president of the united states."

Romney also compared his run to when his father, former Michigan Gov. George Romney, ran for the White House in 1968, AP reports.

"…Times have changed and particularly in a state like Iowa, there's been interest in religion generally and I think religion does have a very important role in our society and therefore it's important to talk about our religious heritage," Romney said.

Throughout this campaign year, Romney has frequently been asked whether he would address his faith directly. Many evangelical Christians view the Mormon Church, officially known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, critically. And voters in general have expressed hesitance about voting for a presidential candidate who subscribes to that faith. Last June, 43 percent of registered voters in a CBS News poll said they would not vote for a presidential candidate who is Mormon.

Romney has frequently been asked whether he would consider delivering a speech about his faith along the lines of the address John F. Kennedy gave when his Catholic faith provoked a similar discussion in the 1960 presidential campaign.

When asked about the possibility of giving such a speech by CBS News chief Washington correspondent Bob Schieffer last month, Romney replied, "I probably could never do something that would compare to what John F. Kennedy did - his was a masterpiece in American political history." Romney continued, "Maybe there's a time when I talk mostly about religion. Although, I don't know, at this stage I'm getting good support across the country, people want to know a bit ... a bit about my faith. They learn a bit about it, and they'll say, 'OK, that's fine, now what do you think about the jihad? What do you think about being competitive with China? How can you fix your schools? What're you going to do about health care?' And those issues overtake any differences with regards to religion they might see."

The speech comes at a moment in the campaign when Romney's once-dominant lead in Iowa has eroded. He trails former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, an ordained Baptist minister, in the most recent poll in the first-in-the-nation caucus. Social conservatives in Iowa, who wield plenty of influence in the caucuses, seem to have vacillated between candidates like Romney and Fred Thompson but appear to be coalescing around Huckabee. Romney's decision to address his faith directly looks to be an attempt to soothe evangelicals who may be having second thoughts.

"Governor Romney understands that faith is an important issue to many Americans, and he personally feels this moment is the right moment for him to share his views with the nation," Madden said in his statement. For Romney, it is a crucial moment in the campaign, one which will put his faith under the kind of spotlight he has sought to avoid until now.

Whenever a presidential candidate decides to give a speech about religious faith, he is taking his political career into his own hands.

That's chiefly because while the vast majority of Americans undoubtedly want their President to be a person of genuine faith, the consensus ends about right there. The kind of faith voters are looking for is harder to pinpoint. Americans want their President to be tolerant, reflective and well-versed in some religious tradition more than they want a strict adherence to any particular religious doctrine.

Mitt Romney's vow to deliver a speech on Thursday about faith and politics will probably end up being general in nature, as much about our faith as his. Romney, a Mormon, decided to give the address around the time he fell behind Mike Huckabee in Iowa, where an outsized proportion of the state's Republicans are evangelical Christians and in some cases take a dim view of Mormonism.

Romney's remarks have been compared to John F. Kennedy's famous 1960 speech in Houston about the role his Catholicism would play if he were elected. In that speech, Kennedy told a group of (mostly Baptist) Texas preachers that if he ever faced a choice between violating his conscience or the national interest, he would resign the office.

But there are a host of differences between the predicament facing Kennedy 47 years ago and the one facing Romney today.

The first is context. Kennedy was in the last weeks of a general election campaign. Romney has yet to be tested in a single primary. Kennedy gave his speech after an assembly of 150 anti-Catholic clergy issued a 2,000-word manifesto stating that no Catholic President could really be free of Vatican control. Though some Evangelical leaders have been publicly critical of Mormonism, no such charge has been laid at Romney's door. And though both men chose Texas as the place to give their remarks, the venues are very different. Kennedy spoke in the lion's den, addressing the greater Houston Ministerial Association, an alliance of Baptist preachers who found the whole idea of a Catholic in the White House almost beyond comprehension. By making his stand at the Bush Library in College Station, Romney is on the far safer ground of a college campus — and deep inside the Bush dynasty's official shrine to boot. If Romney were really following Kennedy's footsteps, he'd be addressing a small group of evangelical preachers — and then letting them ask questions, the way Kennedy did. That speech, which was greeted with a standing ovation, effectively settled the religious issue in the campaign.

The second crucial difference is demographic. By 1960 there were 35 to 40 million Catholics in the U.S., strategically settled in a dozen swing states from the Northeast across the Midwest. Those voters had in many cases gone for Eisenhower. Kennedy wanted to bring them home to the Democrats. Playing the religion card might have helped Richard Nixon in southern and border states, where he was already strong, but would have cost him in swing industrial states that he badly needed to win, so Nixon made a point of telling his people not to raise the religious issue (a plea that did was not heeded by everyone in Nixon's coalition).

Like Kennedy and his Catholics, Romney presumably has a lock on the Mormon vote. But that bloc is much smaller, perhaps five or six million strong. And instead of being concentrated in swing states, Mormons reside largely in intermountain states that for the most part are already solidly Republican. In the key states where Romney faces an early test, he isn't likely to find many Mormons, no matter what he says on Thursday.

Then there are the differing thresholds. For one thing, Kennedy needed to lower the fears of Vatican control of American policy, so he could flatly state that he would not be taking orders from Rome and that his faith was a private matter. Romney at a minimum needs to do that — to say that even though Mormons believe that the head of their church is a prophet who receives God's living word, he would not be taking orders from Salt Lake City — but must do more. Kennedy could wall off his private beliefs from his public policy and be fine, since Democrats especially were happy to keep the two apart. But Romney is in — let's not forget — a Republican primary fight, where base voters want to know that your faith informs your policy. It's almost a disqualifier to say it has no real influence on you.

Kennedy and his team thought the problem they faced was ignorance, which could be addressed by educating voters. But Evangelicals believe Mormonism is a faith that views the Bible as requiring revision, and that when Romney says Christ is his Saviour, he doesn't mean it the same way evangelicals do. Those aren't misunderstandings, they are real differences of faith. As a Romney-backing Evangelical told me in October, "Some of my people — a lot of them — are just never going to go there."

And that brings up another crucial difference between Romney's predicament and Kennedy's. You could call it the fervor gap. Like the Southern Baptists, Mormons are a professing religion: they want to spread the word, win converts, save souls. This isn't a problem for a lot of Americans. But it is a problem for many conservative Christians. Many of them believe that if the GOP nominates Romney — much less if the country elects him as President — Mormons will gain a stronger hand in the all-important business of saving souls. To them, the stakes of that struggle are as great or greater than any fight about a political office.

Story Highlights
* Romney: Company's failure to comply with the law is disappointing and inexcusable
* Romney says the owner guaranteed him he would only hire legal workers
* Campaign: Information indicates the company continues to employ illegal workers
* Immigration reform is a major topic in the race for the Republican nomination

(CNN) -- Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney on Tuesday fired a landscaping company that worked at his home in Boston, Massachusetts, after he said he learned it employs illegal immigrants.

"I am disappointed that our relationship must end on this note," Romney wrote in a letter to the company that was released by his campaign.

"But we simply cannot tolerate your inability to ensure that your employees are legally permitted to work in the United States."

With the former Massachusetts governor locked in a tight race for the top spot in the GOP's upcoming Iowa caucuses, the company -- which Romney said he gave a "second chance" after similar concerns arose last year -- had become an easy target for his political opponents.

"The company's failure to comply with the law is disappointing and inexcusable, and I believe it is important I take this action," Romney said in a written statement.

Romney said he met with the owner of the Community Lawn Service last year and agreed to keep using it after the owner guaranteed him he would only hire legal workers.

Tuesday's announcement came after the Boston Globe approached the campaign with what an official called "credible information" that the company continued to employ illegal workers -- including some at the Romney home.

Immigration reform is a major topic in the race for the Republican nomination, with candidates working to position themselves as tough on workers entering the country illegally.

During a CNN/YouTube debate last week, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani attacked Romney for living in a "sanctuary mansion" where illegal immigrants were allowed to work. VideoWatch the Giuliani-Romney exchange »

Romney clarified that it was the company, not him, that hired the workers and called it "offensive" to suggest he should have checked their immigration status.

"Are you suggesting ... that if you have a company that you hired to provide a service that you are now responsible for going out and checking the employees of that company, particularly those that might look different or don't have an accent like yours?" Romney said during the debate. "I don't think that's American."

On Tuesday, the Giuliani campaign said "the Romney statement speaks for itself" and offered no further comment.

Patrick's post below notes that everyone's got a story to tell about how they could win, but Romney's second in Iowa, first in New Hampshire, ahead in Wyoming, ahead among Republicans in Michigan, and a close second in Florida.

Romney picked up the endorsement of National Review this week, and today announced Judge Bork's endorsement. Romney sits down opposite Tim Russert tomorrow with cash, organization, first or second standing in all of the early primaries, endorsed this week by two of the biggest names in the conservative movement.

Nothing is certain in politics, but Romney is holding the strongest hand by far as the Christmas season largely pushes politics from voter's attention until January 3.

Looking back at 2007, Romney played the long campaign best of all of the candidates.

To dispute Patrick's analysis of Rudy's woes just a bit, my guess is that Romney's voters overwhelmingly favor Rudy as their second choice. (Any pointers to polling on this would be useful, especially in Florida where Rudy will first benefit if Mitt falters.) Either Romney's strategy of momentum plays out and he enters Florida with the best January record, or the GOP regroups and settles on Rudy.

There is no way John McCain will ever recover the trust of the GOP. The boomlet in New Hampshire and Michigan reflects those primaries openness to independents, but you can't win the nomination without the base, and Senator McCain alienated it with McCain-Feingold, angered it with the Gang of 14, and permanently split with it over the September 2006 derailment of the Senate GOP's plans on a number of fronts and then the McCain-Kennedy attempted jam down on immigration reform. The trouble with pundits pumping Senator McCain is that they don't remember what GOP voters remember, and they remember that Senator McCain --always steadfast on the war-- was a maverick on everything else.

and i find it amazing that HH states that McCain lost the base because he opposes torture. good for McCain. christians for waterboarding? perhaps just some of the integrity he lost bending over for Bush in 2004 has been regained.

I liked McCain-Feingold. Something has to be done about the amount of money being spent in campaigns. The campaign season is way too long, too. Now McCain's on the ropes. Romney is leading in all of those polls, and Huckabee is doing very well, too. These endorsements aren't hurting Romney. But Bork's endorsement is "huge"? The guy couldn't get confirmed to the Supreme Court.